‘Good men do bad things’: Cheryl Strayed on healing, truth and #MeToo

Bestselling author Cheryl Strayed, whose memoir “Wild” was turned into an Oscar-nominated film about her recovery from trauma, says listening more is key to healing wounds between men and women in the age of #MeToo. Published in 2012, “Wild” — which recounted Strayed’s gruelling 1,100-mile solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail in America at the age of 26 — was a smash hit that prompted Oprah Winfrey to resurrect her book club. Two years later, the film starring Reese Witherspoon catapulted US author Strayed to fame. The three-month long hike emerged out of Strayed’s struggle to recover from her mother’s untimely death, a loss which sparked the breakdown of her marriage and sent her into a self-destructive spiral of sex and drugs. Now 50, Strayed says that while she is no stranger to trauma — she has told of suffering sexual abuse at the hands of her paternal grandfather when she was just three years old — the #MeToo movement has made her “rethink the meaning of consent”. Speaking to AFP on the sidelines of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, Strayed — long a campaigner for women’s rights — recounts how her high-school boyfriend once ripped off her top and exposed her breasts in front of a male classmate before both boys ran away laughing. “What kills me is that as upset as I was, I just brushed it off and I didn’t break up with him,” she says. “There was no place to say: ‘this is wrong… [Read full story]